Subverting the Coloniality of Language and Literacy: Hybrid Visuality in the Post-Contact Americas

Abstract

Pre-Columbian forms of writing in the Americas thrived on visual media (coupled with no less crucial oral and performative signifiers) of communication. From Mesoamerica to the Andes even if the exact means of this form of communication changed or showed variation (Mesoamerican pictographic and conventional visual signs and Andean khipus and tocapus) the visual-oral-performative combine of this communication was a constant and common feature to a large extent. And this worked with and through another constant: varied forms of materiality this combine was inscribed on or communicated through as also we have seen above.